I want to paraphrase this please Hardware architecture: OP4510 OP4510 simulator

Question

I want to paraphrase this please

Hardware architecture: OP4510

OP4510 simulator was used in this project that showing in figure 2. The OP4510 simulator is equipped with the latest generation of Intel Xeon four-core processors and a powerful Xilinx Kintex 7 FPGA. Co-simulation between FPGA and CPU is also possible. Simulation time-step of the FPGA can go to as low as 160ns making it possible to simulate high frequency converters accurately. OP4510 contains 16 Analog I/O channels and 32 Digital I/O. The architecture of the simulator is shown in Figure 3

Explanation / Answer

So basically the simulator is using 2 devices to perform it's tasks.One is a processor and other one is a FPGA device.let me explain you about both

Processor

Processor is a set of hardware like adder multiplier etc,which can execute the instructions you give to it.The processor company decides which all hardware features needs to be there in it ,manufactures it and ships it to you.You cant have any say in its hardware but you can tweak the software to act according to your need.let me explain suppose Intel decides to ship you a processor without a multiplier and you want to execute 5*4 so you decide to use your adder to add 5 four times to get 20.you got the thing done but it took more time(four additions).That's the issue with processor it will have all basic blocks to get almost everything done but may not be efficient.Its like a swiss knife

FPGA

FPGA stands for field programmable gate array .The uniqueness of FPGA is that you can alter its hardware on the go.Suppose your project want lot off additions ,your FPGA can be altered to have lot of parallel adders .If divider is your requirement you can program your FPGA to act as a divider block.whatever be the task you can alter your FPGA to be a specialised hardware for that task.So fpga's are very fast in what they do.

Since FPGA results are so fast your simulator can manage to simulate such small time steps like 160ns

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